read more poetry

There’s something about this poem that I really like. Parts of it I’m not sure about, but overall, this is the kind of writing I do, and I respect this one as carrying voice.

Bloody Meanderings by Jaria Cecil Sowl

I’ve read very little poetry in my lifetime. In high school I did have teachers that tried to expose me to it, but nothing ever really stuck with me. I do like Sara Teasdale and Robert Frost, but I’d like to read more, and understand it.

music or art counts? I think if someone’s writing makes you want to sit down and challenge, enhance or create your thoughts, it’s incredible. Poetry doesn’t just have to spoken word, in my opinion. It could be a watercolour painting of autumn trees or a humble and sweet ballad…

“man says it’s rainin’, rainin’ outside
I’ll be out there, in a little while
‘cos you see, rain reminds me of you
and everything has turned to you”

learning about it and loving it

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.

For them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.

“I love most anarchists
I hate most poetry
and yet herein I present you with poetry
that disparages anarchists.”

Homophobe
years ago in high school
I was no anarchist.
I thought laws could solve the problems of oppression
and I thought rules should curtail improper behavior.

we formed the gay-straight alliance
to let everyone know that homophobia was going to stop.

one day a teacher taught us that fanny packs were for fags
and I used to respect that teacher
but I told him I didn’t appreciate gay jokes.
three other members of the gay-straight alliance
who were in the class with me
tried to turn invisible.

he told me that it wasn’t serious.

I told him the law against queer discrimination
in the publics schools of our county.

his eyebrows dropped in anger
his old broken hands wrung themselves
“if you want someone to understand you
or comply, the worst possible way is
to quote law at them, to tell them
what they can and cannot do.”

I was silent and self-righteous at the time
but he was right about law.

I still don’t appreciate gay jokes.

Speciesist
there was a campfire in the woods, of course
and we soberly plotted authority’s demise.

I don’t know who it was who suggested that
every fast food joint should burn.

the woodfire crackled with joy and
wise young heads nodded.

I was old at 21 -
I suggested that ideally one would be prepared
to feed the family of the displaced cashiers
and fry cooks
until they found other jobs.

the woodfire sputtered its disdain and silence
or disbelief gathered in the faces around me.

they taught me that concern for humanity
is tantamount to treason
and for voicing this opinion
I was speciesist.

Audist
she was on the seat of the bike
while I worked the pedals
and this is probably as close as
I will ever come to telling her how
amazing she was and is.

playing the spoons three-four to
my concertina on the street
or reading Sherman Alexie aloud
before we fell asleep.

but there she was on the seat of the bike,
not 100lbs but with more anti-fascist brawls
in her than me, she was brass knuckles and
brown fists.

“I saw this sign,” I began, and asked her
what audism was.
she didn’t know, but conjectured it meant
discrimination against the hearing impaired.
surely, I argued, that was covered under ableism.

“ah!” she laughed, “are you claiming that
those who can’t hear are differently abled?
let me off this bike, you audist!”

and so we collapsed into the grass and laughed
and laughed.

I like poetry, but I rarely make the time to read it properly. When you read poetry, you read for different things than what you’d read for in a novel. I’ve discovered that if I write a poem down as I read it, then I am taking the time to appreciate it. I have been trying to copy out a poem a day. I also like the physical act of writing, so it’s quite a fun exercise.

Our local library hosts an eight month Poetry Slam every year. It is now in it’s 7th year. Last night the Slam was in my regional branch. I took the night off work and went. It was a lot of fun. Next month is the Grand Slam Finale in the main library. The finalist from the past seven months compete.

I had a lot of fun last night so I plan to go to the Grand Slam Finale in May.

I bought a 1,000-page book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry on Friday.
I rule!

I happened across his latest collection, ‘A Book of Lives’, at the library and stayed up that night reading it through. Some of my favourites:

_{Touch
Touch is everything or nearly everything or it is nothing. Crocodiles mate, after all.
The Devil’s swedger at minus a hundred is as cold and as ruthless as the Pole
And only the most despairing and abandoned, female or male, could take it in their hole
Or so we were told, or so they were told, when wretched creatures were taught of the Fall
Of Man instead of the Rise of Man and hair-shirts and chastity-belts were thought to assist our feeble but our dearest soul
Which struggled, crying, to be free
And use its body to be
The means of greatest grace, frolicking and fucking in the tropical throbbing unstoppable waterfall.}

_{A Birthday: for I.H.F.
It is no use offering the gatekeeper a garland of seventy-nine
rhododendron petals. He can count.
Do not waste your time showing the guardian of the grove a
pretty pretty book of eighty-one amorous pictures.
And as for that album of seventy-eight famous executions,
keep it for the next bonfire.
If you are ever tempted to photograph a convocation of eigty-two
midges thin with hunger and thirst, forget it.
Or if the cosmetic surgeon from Giacometti & Co. promises
to make you a new man on payment of only
seventy-seven pounds sterling, turn your pockets out
with a shrug.
But when at last you come across a ship with eighty
sails, oh what a sight that is to take to heart, with
the white canvas flapping and the rigging snapping as
she churns the ocean through a stiff breeze, and the
sailors sing out their seemingly inexhaustible store
of shanties, and the dolphins slice and gleam
and are ahead of the prow like protective things
from a world that is not quite ours, and the
playful captain out of sheer joy blasts his
horn eighty times into the misty morning, and
then with his blue eyes glittering he bangs the
rail – ‘Steady as she goes!’}

_{Old Gorbals
Old Gorbals in his long black coat
muttered and stalked from room to room.
He kicked up dust, dead flies, newspapers,
a crumpled envelope or two.
There was no news, there was no message
in the stillness, no cat, no dog,
no voice to his ‘Anybody there?’
Of course not, they’ve all gone, gone where?
He’ll never know, the thread is snapped
that he held fiercely all these years.
He shakes his head, crosses a window
like a shadow. There was so much life!
He can’t believe it has disappeared:
he hears the children running, shrieking,
sees the TVs glowing blue,
marvels at the rows, the language,
crash of bottles, slam of doors,
car-doors too, oh yes, look down
at taxi after taxi, all piled full
with the raucous hopes of a Saturday.
The lamplight in the street looked up
at many windows bright at midnight,
and even the curtains were snatched tight
you felt hearts beating and lips meeting
as private twenty storeys up
as in any cottage by the sea.
Old Gorbals flicked dust from his sleeve,
sighed a bit and swore a bit,
made for the stairs, out, looked back
at the grand tower, gave a growl,
and in a spirit of something or other
sprayed a wall with DONT FORGET.}